Fanny Says Read online

  who phoned his brother before making a confetti

  of his own brains? Or that other young uncle—a good-looking

  son of a bitch—who, face-down in the river, took mud

  into his handsome lungs? Or the babies—Jesus, always the babies—

  drowned in washtubs or bit by brown recluse, or Claire, a girl born

  four months early, small enough to crib in a shoebox

  who thrived, but her brother—full-term, healthy as a horse—

  who was sleeping sound on his second day when he

  just died?

  And who remembers Yael but me, that girl with the name so pretty

  I could taste the syllables—Yah Elle—

  and called her again and again? She was only

  seven, her blood a sandstorm of cells, at war with itself.

  Or my soft-spoken cousin, that kid

  surfer who thought he could crush time-

  release pain killers with his teeth and

  live? Does anyone remember how impossible

  death seemed in Florida, how like a sun-scorched

  fern his hands curled, two black fiddleheads, the foam at his mouth

  when all his chickenshit friends left him

  for dead? On the way to his funeral, Fanny got after us for wearing black:

  All you young girls always wearing dark, dark, dark, she said. You need to put on a bright

  and purdy color, something that don’t make you look so depressed all the fucking time.

  We laughed, reminded her where we were going, but who can say

  her fussing was a joke—her amnesia seemed

  fender-struck, a switch flipped

  off inside a woman who couldn’t take no more.

  Later that day we walked to church under mangroves swarmed

  with the bright green fluster of wild parakeets.

  I can’t say I remember much more than my aunt, how she looked

  up into the trees, said, Oh, little birds, don’t you know?

  And the birds, briskly chittering back, answered her:

  No.

  Fanny Linguistics: Birdsong

  Ornithologists claim even birds chirp with

  dialects, singing the same syrinx tune

  bluegrass in one region,

  subway jazz in another,

  and I imagine a jay—fierce blue mother

  cawing from the trees—

  up north

  clearing her throat,

  a librarian whisper of

  Quiet, son, please

  but here

  a hot-scald blister of

  Boy, shut your mouth.

  Fanny would be tickled by that,

  she’d say again

  there wasn’t an animal she’d tolerate

  except a bird,

  how she never did like puppies or kittens or nothing.

  Just birds, she’d say, then:

  When I was little, we didn’t have no running water

  so used to pull our britches down

  and pee on the ground then pull them up again

  to squat and look at the little chicks.

  She might sip her Pepsi, squint

  like she was sighting a rifle, add,

  See, it was such a different time; necessity meant you ate

  even the little things you loved. Aunt Lonni, she had chickens,

  and she killed hers.

  Fanny Says She Learned to Throw the First Stone

  Aunt Lonni, sweet Addeline, her husband was cheating on her with a woman named Edna. Now, I never will forget it. . . . I saw that woman’s car, it was sky blue, and back then, those roads, Koey, they were made out of big rocks, and I just stopped and picked up one and then another and threw em . . . like this . . . and well, let me tell you, I tore the back of her car and that window all to pieces.

  And Aunt Lonni, she knew all about Edna—even knew her name—but she said, Fanny, now you shouldn’t do that, don’t you dare, but all the while she was just a loving it and covering her mouth and a laughing.

  And when my uncle saw me, he said, I’m a gonna kill you, but I said, I’m a gonna sue you for all that money you owe me. See, he had promised me ten cents to carry in five loads of wood, and by the time I got to the last load, he was already halfway to town. . . . See, he would stay gone all weekend.

  He had three kids by that mistress.

  Hettie

  was the name she called us, and what she meant was clumsy,

  graceless, all assholes and elbows tripping up the steps, then laying eyes on me, saying,

  Well, I don’t figure that child’s ever gonna learn to ride that bicycle,

  how long she gonna perch stone-still on that thing, propped on the kickstand?

  I bet Hettie here knows she’s bound to bite the dust before she even leaves the drive.

  Hettie, as in:

  Well, Hettie, you done broke your grandmama’s crystal bowl

  in a thousand pieces, meaning, you ain’t never had a summer in all your live-

  long life without scabbed knees, meaning absentminded, plum-bruised,

  the side of my leg catching corners, or meaning, as a book put it,

  the absence of pleasure makes one clumsy, or in another text, a person post-

  trauma can disassociate, quit paying attention, survive the crash

  soft-limbed, like a drunk.

  Hehhh-Teeee, hollered two-tone,

  mountain-style, a come-and-get-it supper bell,

  at times meaning you did something off-kilter, singed with violence,

  as in, Well, Hettie, whatever you did to that boyfriend of yours made him mad

  as a hornet, looks like he plum wore out the side of his van with his fist,

  or, Well, Hettie, I can’t believe you just blew the head clear off

  your doll with that firecracker. Because, Yes, Hettie, you really did it this time,

  meaning, at least you didn’t

  kill nobody.

  There was a Hettie once,

  a real Hettie, way back in the family,

  but she was crazy as a loon, spent her whole life at Central State with

  her finger up inside her trying to grab men’s things. Hettie the nymphomaniac,

  the queen masturbator, the gal that at a picnic grabbed Monroe’s

  thing, the one that would fuck a snake if it didn’t

  have a head on it. Hettie, imagined with wild red hair and mosquito-pocked legs,

  the fists of her raw knees peeking out from under her tie-back hospital gown.

  Hettie, the only woman we knew who wanted it,

  who wouldn’t say

  I’ d rather

  toothbrush the kitchen floor on my hands and knees,

  wouldn’t say, I’ d just as soon set my hair on fire, wouldn’t whisper,

  I counted each and every rose on the wallpaper before he was through,

  or I’ d rather pluck my curliest hairs out one-by-one than deal

  with him tonight, all said in half-jest, a joke hollered down from their teetering

  pedestals, making the men rooster up, all said making one thing clear:

  I ain’t no Hettie, ain’t no loosey-goosey hot-pants whore.

  But I can’t help

  but wonder, can’t help but make up something

  for our Hettie, something to do with a house on stilts in the holler

  and a father who took her right under the floorboards where

  her mother stood, but who knows, she could have pulled her budding

  breasts out for Captain Kangaroo, she could have rubbed herself

  raw on the old tweed couch, a tarpaper ten-cent

  trick, for all we know—

  which is nothing,

  which is Hettie is the name Fanny called us, and if you’re not

  a Hettie then you’re hands-and-knees down scrubbing the floor, that if

  what happened to you doesn’t make you one way, it will make you
<
br />   another—that you won’t exist at all or you’ll be

  too much—either tripping up the porch steps

  to tell Mama what happened

  or crawling under them to take

  more, all the while wanting

  to hide, hot

  with a match

  catching underneath

  the old wood

  planks.

  Fanny Says How to Be a Lady

  1. Never tell your age. If under cardiac arrest and the ambulance comes, the paramedic will ask lots of questions—the city you live in, the president, your last name. Answer him best you can, but if he asks the year you were born, say, You’re the doctor here. If you’re so fucking smart, why don’t you tell me how old I am?

  2. Watch your reputation close. Remember, if you lie down with dogs, you’ll come up with fleas, and no man will buy a cow if he gets the milk for free. Now, if you need a husband, put on a pair of pants—tight now, so it shows your rump—and get a little chain to walk that dog. Go on to that fire station and walk past. Now those firemen are gonna notice you and whoop and holler, but you don’t pay them no mind, you just keep walking with your head held high. By the fourth or fifth time you walk past, one of them’s gonna say, Well, I’m going outside to talk to that ho . . . and that’s just what he’ll say . . . but I’m sure he’ll learn right different, soon enough. And then? It’d be all she wrote.

  3. Take it easy, keep your feet up, and don’t carry nothing heavy unless you want your uterus to fall out on the hot sidewalk. And if you lift weights, you’ll lose your perky breasts, you won’t be left with a tiddy one; trust your grandma, stay away from the gym, cause like I say, I don’t believe in exercise, no, not one bit.

  4. Speaking of your tiddies, once you lose them, you can’t get them back. Wear a brassiere with a good wire day and night, even to sleep, and don’t let no baby nurse you. If you do, they’ll deflate into two bananas. Then what will you do? Ain’t a thing wrong with bottle-feeding— look at you, raised up on formula from day one, and you seem to be alright.

  5. Steer clear of places where common people go. Public pools ain’t nothing but a sea of hot piss, and if you’re forced to drink in a restaurant, you ask for a straw, because Lord knows where that cup has been.

  6. Don’t fool with a boy with no home training. If he pulls in front of the house and lays on the horn, don’t you answer. You ain’t no whore, he needs to come to the front door proper and knock. And when you get to his car, Grandma will be watching to see if he opens the passenger side. If not, you stand still, let him jump in alone . . . soon enough, he’ll notice you’re not in the car and come around to open your door. I mean it: I’ll be watching, and if you so much as touch that handle, I’m coming out to whup your ass. A man will respect you once you’ve earned it. Start a puppy early, and he won’t pull the leash.

  7. Don’t answer the phone, specially if a boy you like is calling. I don’t care if you’re picking your toes and watching The Flintstones on a Friday night, you let Grandma answer. I’ll tell him, No, she’s not here, she went down to Miami with a few girlfriends and never came back. When he sees you, you got to pretend now—Oh, we had such a good time. We played volleyball and got a tan. That will keep him from taking you for granted, for waiting so long to call, thinking you’d always be there, waiting around.

  8. People mostly see what you say. Now, if you’ve got a crooked nose, let them know and that will be all they notice. And your feet? I know they’re flat and turned in, big enough to row a canoe, but tell people and they’ll think you’re afflicted. Look in the mirror, girl. You’re as pretty as you let yourself be; you’re just fine.

  9. Don’t ever let folks think you’re trash. Don’t sit with your legs open drawing flies, don’t ever let me see you drink straight from a bottle or can, and for God’s sake, never serve coffee with the stirring spoon still in the cup. Wear your hair up after thirty, but never let nobody cut it off, and at suppertime, don’t you dare touch the last bite. You don’t want people to think you’re hungry: if you enjoy somebody else’s dinner, don’t say thank you for the meal, but thank you for such a nice time. Don’t track in through the front door unless you’re company; if you’re family, use the back. And if you’ve been drinking from the same glass for a few hours, it’s greasy, get yourself a clean one, fresh from the dishwasher. Ain’t no sense ever being dirty; soap don’t cost a nickel, now, soap’s cheap.

  10. Be mean and fight for it. That’s the only way it will ever come to you. Remember what Grandma tells you: People will take only what you let them, and you hold that head back and walk straight. You understand? Be mean, fight for it. Hold that head back, walk straight. You’ll remember what I tell you? You’ll remember, won’t you?

  II

  Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is what it means to have no loved version of your life but the one you make.

  —Dorothy Allison

  Clorox

  1.

  A noun,

  as in a commercial disinfecting agent,

  but also a verb,

  an action to make the water grow

  teeth—tiny, crystalline, color-eating teeth—

  making the water

  capable, bringing red

  to its knees:

  your oxblood tee now the color of

  nipples, your salsa-hot dress neutered

  cheap carnation pink,

  all our deepest purple

  a sad, dry rot of brown.

  A complete sentence might read:

  Careful now, or Fanny’s gonna clorox

  the shit out of your clothes; you and I know

  she burns through a bottle a week.

  But more likely, you’d hear:

  Child, you looking like some trash.

  Give your grandma that dinge.

  I don’t care if you ain’t got a dime.

  I told you a hundred and one times—

  soap’s cheap.

  2.

  A noun,

  but also a verb,

  as in to clorox:

  to clorox that carny tub and toilet,

  to clorox the chicken-grease backsplash and hand-smudge light switch,

  as in to clorox the cup

  Donason drank from

  when he visited

  up from Miami

  to smoke cigarettes and

  to try not to say

  goodbye.

  Even at six, I could see

  the Kaposi sarcoma

  too big for the joy

  of the violet scarf

  spangled round his neck.

  He was one of the boys

  she took in,

  raised right

  alongside her own, but

  when he left, she cloroxed that cup twice,

  then threw it out.

  3.

  A smell—

  wealth sweetened with a little zip,

  a salty tang,

  a bright chlorine rising up

  to say, it’s alright now,

  put your babies in water wings, let them splash in,

  because this ain’t nothing

  like that piss-yellow swimming hole

  sick with infantigo, this ain’t nothing like Bowling Green

  where the only time she let herself get dunked

  was to be baptized in that mudbottom river

  named Barren.

  Come. This water is modern,

  this water is amnesiac

  with no memory of leathery eggs

  of cottonmouths hatching in its bank

  or catfish whiskering the

  holes below;

  hell, this water can’t even remember

  common spiders that once straddled its surface,

  walking impossible

  as Christ himself.

  4.

  An agent manufactured specifically

  to break the chemical bonds

  of color,

  as in
to clorox the tub white and the toilet

  whiter, as in to clorox the tile white and the grout

  whiter, as in to blanch a house

  a hundred shades of white—

  antique lace walls and cloud trim, the unforgiving stark

  of Formica cabinets and counters, the sleepy snow

  sheets and shag rugs, the bone leather sofa and matching chairs,

  the take-off-your-shoes-or-Fanny’s-gonna-whup-your-ass

  wall-to-wall white carpet

  white enough to put Elvis’ living room

  to shame,

  everything brand and spanking and new,

  everything white

  because you know and I know other people are lazy

  and buy dark colors to hide

  dirt, but you know my house is clean by looking,

  her house white

  as a baby’s bottom, white

  as the pure driven, so white she kept

  a black maid six days a week to keep it so.